There used to be a Tv programme called The Trials Of Life. It was about survival of wild animals up against the forces of nature. With that in mind, my relatively cushy existence is probably not worth complaining about, but if I didn't complain, I'd have nothing to write!

Last night's journey home proved to be quite a nuisance. I was rushing back to help out with some Diy, and I also needed a new hard disk for a computer I was going to reinstall with software. None of this should have been difficult.

The drive home was marred by a diversion. The sat nav got me out of that one, I'm pleased to say. There had just been an accident, so there was just a road closure, no diversion signs. Tricky, but not the end of the world. I fought through some traffic at the other end to get me to the retail park where Maplin and Pc World, spit, both reside. I wanted some cable tidies from Maplin, so I went there first. I asked one of the staff where to find hard drives, thinking that I may as well check them out while I was there. He told me to go to the other end of the store as he was leaving. He made it clear that I was in the wrong for talking to him. How dare I talk to a member of staff when he's on his way somewhere. I didn't know he was going, and he still works there.

When I'm in a rush I get quite single minded and much less patient. Still, I went to where I was sent and asked again. I was told to read through the catalogue. So I did. I found nothing of use, so I bought my cable ties and headed to Pc World, spit.

Hard drives that go inside the computer are not on the main shelves. After some vain searching, I looked for a member of staff. Two were dealing with an irate customer on the shop floor. One, the younger lad, appeared to be just standing and nodding, rather than involved. Running out of patience, I interrupted and apologised and asked for directions to the hard drives. I was sent to a locked cabinet with drives in, not a full list of price tags and nobody serving. I then went to the desk adjacent to this cabinet to wait for the person at that desk to complete what she was on and help me.

To put this into context, all I wanted was any sort of standard hard drive. The smallest in capacity and cheapest they did. That was it. It should cost maybe 25 quid, though I expected to pay more. Eventually, when my patience had reached its lowest ebb, after minutes of frustration, watching nothing happening in the store while my life ticked away, the young lad from earlier approached the desk and offered to serve me. I told him I wanted his cheapest hard drive. He opened the cabinet. He asked which I wanted. I said the cheapest. He asked which that was. I said I didn't know. He worked there, perhaps he could tell me. He picked up a drive with 360 gigs capacity: thats more than the sum of all the drives on every computer I use. I said that that was unlikely to be the cheapest. He got shirty with me. I asked him to look it up on his system. He wasn't impressed. I wasn't impressed. It was turning into a row. I stopped a moment. I asked if we could start again and we did. He found me the smallest drive. It was cheap enough and I bought it. He apologised for his attitude. We shrugged off the incident. Bad day all round, I guess.

Then home for some Ikea assembly. Things went well until a drawer got stuck mid assembly. It's a one use design. You attach the runners, slide the drawer in onto them, they grip and it's for life. If they grip the wrong way and jam. . . It could be game over. We managed to undo it. It was my fault.

The computer installation proved to be totally painless. That was far too easy. Still, it made up for the rest of the fuss.